South West mum blog

Simple Banana Bread: delicious and uses up bananas

From being an always-in-the-lunch-box baby staple, Scrip’s now a bit take it or leave it about bananas. She does like them mashed with milk and a bit of brown sugar (thanks to my mum for reminding me how much I used to like them like this!) And she’ll occasionally eat a whole one as long as she can try and peel it herself. But she’d generally rather have an apple or a pear. Which means that we sometimes have one or two browning bananas left in the fruit bowl.

Now I just stick them straight in the freezer, unpeeled, and use them later for banana bread (don’t worry if the skins turn black when frozen and the insides go mushy – the riper, the better). This one is such a simple recipe and it always gives a really moist cake that goes down very well. Serve it spread with a bit of butter (yes, we do this in my family, much to my husband’s confusion!) or just on its own. It keeps for around a week in a tin or freezes well as a loaf or already cut into slices. This is based on a BBC recipe.

Ingredients

285g/10oz plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp salt

110g/4oz butter, plus extra for greasing the tin

225g/8oz caster sugar

2 free-range eggs

4 ripe bananas, mashed – either fresh and very ripe or defrosted frozen bananas. I either take them out of the freezer and leave them to defrost on the side for a few hours or defrost them in the microwave for a couple of minutes, then squeeze them out of the skins and mash.

85ml/3fl oz buttermilk 285g/10oz plain flour (or normal milk mixed with 1½ tsp lemon juice – I tend to do this as I never have buttermilk)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a large bowl – but not your main mixing bowl.

In a separate mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs, mashed bananas, buttermilk and vanilla extract to the butter and sugar mixture and mix well. Fold in the flour mixture.

Transfer to the oven and bake for about an hour – I usually check it with a skewer at about 55 mins – or until well-risen and golden-brown. It does tend to get quite brown on the top but the inside will still be moist.

Remove from the oven and cool in the tin for a few minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely before serving. And enjoy!